


A Wily Iris

by captain_nicnac



Category: Good Omens (TV), The Wild Iris (Louise Glück)
Genre: M/M, SO, and crowley reads it, that's it babey!!!, the wild iris is a book of poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 23:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21126683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captain_nicnac/pseuds/captain_nicnac
Summary: Crowley reads The Wild Iris, a book of poetry by Louise Glück. This fic is meant to take place afterIt's a Hard Life, but all you need to know is:Aziraphale and Crowley spent about 55 years as humansCrowley (now a demon again) is helping Beelzebub overthrow Satan so they can return to their original goal of pursuing independence and free willAziraphale (now an angel again) is helping a repentant Gabriel fix the problems with Heaven according to God’s will~Each chapter is its own poem, broken up into stanzas with commentary. The poem in its entirety will be posted in the end notes, if you want to read it without interruption





	A Wily Iris

_ At the end of my suffering _

_ there was a door. _

It had been many years since Crowley had first tried to read this book, and now it hit him just as hard as before. The word  _ suffering  _ brought a flood of images into his mind, images that weren’t even in the text, images stuffed tight into each cold letter. He could hear the screams of anger and agony, smell the burning feathers, feel the holy sword plunged into his chest, taste his heavenly ichor filling his mouth. His stomach lifted as though he were falling…

But at the end of that suffering? The door only led to more suffering. That’s where all the bloody doors of his life took him. 

_ Hear me out: that which you call death _

_ I remember. _

Crowly thought bitterly,  _ What do you know of Death?  _

Crowley remembered Death. They had met. Azazel died that day, a more excruciating death than any human could experience. The being that emerged from that death was a ghost—Crawly, Crowly, Anthony, AJ, no matter how many incarnations of the same specter.

_ Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. _

_ Then nothing. The weak sun _

_ flickered over the dry surface. _

_ It is terrible to survive _

_ as consciousness _

_ buried in the dark earth. _

Crowley vaguely remembered Aziraphale telling him these poems were about flowers. So it was a metaphor. Winter, and then the reawakening in spring. Flowers emerging from the soil. How… cliched. 

And yet the image spoke to him. To be surrounded by darkness, and perhaps to catch a glimpse of some possible freedom. Sometimes it was the glimpse that hurt more than the darkness. 

_ Then it was over: that which you fear, being _

_ a soul and unable _

_ to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth _

_ bending a little. And what I took to be _

_ birds darting in low shrubs. _

Crowley  _ did  _ know how it felt to emerge from the soil into a lively garden. When he first arrived on Earth it was not a descending. Instead he ascended from deep below, eyes burnt by hellfire and caked with dirt. He emerged as a snake, nose-first, flicking tongue tasting air that was  _ almost  _ as delicious than that in Heaven. Well, perhaps more so. Hard to compare such distant memories. 

Then he thought, no. The garden was much more beautiful than Heaven. As was the rest of Earth after. 

_ You who do not remember _

_ passage from the other world _

_ I tell you I could speak again: whatever _

_ returns from oblivion returns _

_ to find a voice: _

Unable to speak, then could speak again. 

When Crowley first Fell his throat was strangled with brimstone and he thought that perhaps the punishment for asking questions, for speaking out of turn, was to never speak again. But he soon learned, whispering to Eve, planting a deadly seed in God’s new favorite creation, that this was not the case. 

No, instead his curse was that his words could only hurt. Lies, deception, encouragement to evil. Perhaps, upon returning from oblivion, he found a voice; but it wasn’t one he particularly liked. 

That was the door. Questions to lies. He had been shoved through it before he even knew what was happening. 

_ from the center of my life came _

_ a great fountain, deep blue _

_ shadows on azure seawater. _

Crowly was startled by a little cough. He was so caught up in the reading and rereading of the poem that he had quite forgotten where he was. 

The sights and smells of the bookshop rushed over him. And there Aziraphale was, reading as well, deeply engrossed. So the cough was involuntary, unconscious, not meant to catch his attention. But when  _ didn’t  _ Aziraphale catch his attention? 

Ever since that first moment on the wall… the blue of the lonely ponds left behind in Eden, the blue of the sky meeting the golden desert, the blue of an angel’s eyes. An angel unlike any he had met. His eyes were bright as the light glinting of every drop spraying from a fountain. As vast and gentle as the ocean.

Crowley thought,  _ who’s cliched now?  _

_ At the end of my suffering,  _ he read again,  _ there was a door.  _ When was  _ truly  _ the end of his suffering? Well. The emotion bubbling up in his chest when he looked at Aziraphale gave a ready answer. 

The center of his life. The one who pulled him from oblivion and gave him back his voice. 

Aziraphale kept leading him through doors, ones he never imagined for himself, each one to a more beautiful world than the last. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the end of my suffering  
there was a door.
> 
> Hear me out: that which you call death  
I remember.
> 
> Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.  
Then nothing. The weak sun  
flickered over the dry surface.
> 
> It is terrible to survive  
as consciousness  
buried in the dark earth.
> 
> Then it was over: that which you fear, being  
a soul and unable  
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth  
bending a little. And what I took to be  
birds darting in low shrubs.
> 
> You who do not remember  
passage from the other world  
I tell you I could speak again: whatever  
returns from oblivion returns  
to find a voice:
> 
> from the center of my life came  
a great fountain, deep blue  
shadows on azure seawater.


End file.
